Pro-Life – Page 2 – Catholic Light

An escape – to where?

This article shows the depths of the assisted suicide obsession.
The Swiss “clinic,” serving mostly “patients” from Britain, now plans the assisted suicide of a perfectly healthy woman. Why? Because her partner is terminally ill – and if he goes, she wants to go at the same time.
It seems like the stuff of romance novels and epic stories – the suicide pact. I’m sure there are people who are so without hope that they feel their life is already over, or could end at any time.
Still the “clinic” operators return to the same point when explaining their reason for being.

…anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the National Health Service.
…Mr Minelli said that failed suicide attempts caused problems and extra costs for the British health service.
…”For 50 suicide attempts you have one suicide and the odds of failing with heavy costs for the National Health Service,” he said.”In many, many cases they are terribly hurt afterwards, sometimes you have to put them into institutions for 50 years, very costly.”

Let’s look on the bright side, they tell us:

“We should have a nicer attitude to suicide, saying suicide is a very good possibility to escape.”

So there you have it. The “patient” has no hope. The clinic has the secular reason for making it happen: cut costs.
As we approach Holy Week, we are about to relive the story of hopelessness turned to hope through the death and resurrection of Jesus. May those who are contemplating their escape find hope in Jesus’ sacrifice.

The Caritas debacle, part 2

To pick up where I left off a few days ago: Cardinal O’Malley is having the National Catholic Bioethics Center review a deal that the Catholic hospital system Caritas Christi has made with the state government here in Massachusetts.
On the face of it, the plan is a scandal. Still, I’m hoping the immoral aspects of the deal can be corrected, so that for the sake of everyone involved, Caritas could participate in the state program on a legitimate basis.
I’m figuring that the moral problems with the situation are in these areas:
(1) Did Caritas solicit Centene (the company joining them in the project) to set up an abortion-providing insurance plan? If so, that appears to be plainly wrong. Would it be a personal fault by Caritas officials or would it vitiate the plan totally, so that it would remain morally tainted even if other aspects are “corrected”?
(2) Caritas is willingly a part-owner of the new CFHP (joint venture with Centene’s subsidiary Celtic Insurance), which will administer the plan and provide abortion coverage as the state contract requires. I doubt that this ownership can be justified under any circumstances. Can Caritas “correct” this aspect by divesting itself of its share in CFHP?
(3) Caritas is, according to its statements in the press, already complying with state rules in a related matter: they give out “Department of Public Health information” on “emergency contraception” to rape victims, as required by law. Does that distinction reflect a difference that makes it morally tolerable?
(4) Can Caritas hospitals and physicians, as a subcontractor to CFHP, comply with the state-imposed contractual requirement to give abortion info? Do their contracts with other insurance companies have the same requirement? Are the hospitals already complying? Can the compliance be fulfilled in some minimalistic way that doesn’t violate moral norms? If all the insurance contracts require it, and there is no morally licit way to fulfill the requirement, then I don’t see how Caritas can continue to operate.
[Note: I know this is a hot-button topic, so commenters should be on notice. Comments that in my opinion cross the line will be removed. –RC]

The Caritas debacle, part 1

Lately here in Boston we’ve had an uproar over the Catholic hospital system Caritas Christi. It’s trying to set up an organization to provide health care for low-income people on the state’s subsidized insurance plan, Commonwealth Care. At present, there are four relatively small HMOs offering services for Commonwealth Care subscribers, and Caritas’ would be a fifth.
There’s a serious ethical problem involved, though, because the state requires all the insurance companies administering the Commonwealth Care program to include abortion and contraception coverage.
Understandably pro-life Catholics are — shall we say — concerned and want to make sure that Caritas doesn’t compromise on medical ethics, or come under state pressure to cooperate with abortions: for example, by referring patients to abortion providers, since it was plain that Caritas would not do them itself.
Caritas teamed up with a for-profit health company called Centene and is forming a joint venture company for the project. When the plan was briefed to state regulators, though, the Centene rep told them that yes, abortions would be provided. The plan would even provide transportation.
Did Caritas think that this would absolve it of responsibility? The arrangement — at least as it has been reported in the press and in the state government website — would seem to make Caritas part-owner of a company that provides abortion coverage.
To put it mildly, this didn’t give lay pro-lifers much confidence in the ethical competence of the decision makers here in Boston.
It’s especially shocking, since the board of directors of Caritas includes several appointees from the Archdiocese, and the priest J. Bryan Hehir, known formerly as a prominent USCC foreign-policy official in the 1980s, is the Archdiocesan liaison to Caritas Christi. Did these worthies know and approve of this disturbing arrangement? Maybe some knew, but apparently some important people didn’t know: CWNews.com cited an “informed source” that claimed that the whole deal was a surprise to Cardinal O’Malley.
Well, thanks be to God, good pro-life folks sounded off at the Mass. Citizens for Life and the Mass. Catholic League; and Cardinal O’Malley stepped up to say that the Archdiocese was going to exercise its right to supervise medical ethics issues for Caritas and would veto the deal if it doesn’t stay within ethical limits. To assist in making his decision, he’d get the proposal reviewed by the National Catholic Bioethics Center, an organization well trusted among pro-lifers for its strong commitment to Catholic medical ethics.
On Thursday, the state, for their part, approved the deal, and the Cardinal reiterated that unless and until he approved it, it would not go into effect.
And I figured that’s about the best one can expect.
But that hasn’t been enough for everybody. Some grossly exaggerated rumors have been flying about this case: that within weeks hospital employees would soon be pressured into cooperating with abortions; that the Archdiocese was selling out the Catholic hospital system; that the Cardinal wasn’t pro-life even!
Oh, man! More later….

Qualifications for a Bishop

Scranton’s bishop Joseph Martino has been doing a great job lately of communicating the Catholic faith in public in spite of opposition, instructing Catholic institutions and public officials, and through them, the faithful at large. He’s shown a commitment to prevent Church events from being used to honor reprehensible politicians. He’s reminded a Catholic college to show its commitment to Catholic moral teaching and distance itself from any endorsement of immorality. He’s taught politicians publicly about such as the injustice of government tolerance for abortion, let alone subsidy of it, and
When I read the Bishop’s letter to the misguided Senator Bob Casey Jr., whose voting record is not worthy of the Casey name, I noticed that Bp. Martino is the holder of an earned doctorate in Church history. Now that’s not a common accomplishment among bishops. The most prominent bishop I know of with a similar background is the estimable George Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, who made his studies at Oxford.
We certainly need more such bishops like these: able to stand against the fashions of the moment and teach Christian doctrine. Perhaps we can start looking for bishops among other priests with a background in Church history, and with reason: men with enough interest in Church history to study it in depth are likely to have particular qualities of temperament that the Church needs, such as an admiration for sacred tradition. That is an important quality in this time, when Pope Benedict wants to promote a correct understanding of the Second Vatican Council as a development in continuity with the preceding 1962 years of Church life, and not a breach from it.
Furthermore, bishops with a knowledge of past relations between society, the state, and the teaching Church can have a realistic understanding about what is possible and what is not: that pleasing everyone and leaving problems unattended is not the pathway to peace.

Unfortunately, it is fitting and right

So Mr. Obama is going to take the oath of office while holding the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used when he took the oath. Our Sunday Visitor mentions that there is a “Catholic connection” to that historical event: that Lincoln took the oath before Chief Justice Roger Taney, the first Catholic to hold that office.
Alas, Taney is not a figure in whom we could take pride. He was a firm supporter of slavery, and wrote in the Dred Scott decision that

blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.”

Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, “all men are created equal,” Taney reasoned that “it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration. . . .”

Which is more or less the way some contemporary public officials consider preborn children: that they can be created or destroyed at will, treated as objects to be placed in cold storage, flushed down a sewer when unwanted, destroyed in laboratory experiments for utilitarian purposes, and not treated as members of the human community or subjects of rights.
With so many bad Catholic politicians collaborating in this injustice, it is only appropriate to associate Taney with the inauguration of the most pro-abortion administration yet in the US.